I don’t know if it’s the onset of warmer summer weather, but suddenly releases are popping up out of the woodwork. You can hardly blink for another pair of albums, EPs or singles coming in…and even more unusually, the bulk of them are really quite good.

So don’t get the misapprehension that we’ve suddenly gone soft here at Third Eye…it’s just a (sadly rare) case of a whole lot of folks stepping up to the plate and doing their damnedest to bat one out of the park. Sure, there are a few grounders and a fly ball or two, but at least they’re not bunting…

Without any further ado, let’s get into what will probably be the most generally positive month of reviews you’ve encountered to date…and for those who don’t like to hear that, hey, I’m sure the usual big load of crap will resume next month!*

* Don’t take me up on that, guys…it was nice having such a good batch of releases for a change…

With temps running as low as the mid 60’s for several summers in a row and hurricanes starting a month or more earlier than usual, holidays with nary a hint of snow for the better part of a decade or so and blazing summer heat arriving as early as mid-April, you really get the sense that it’s time to rework the calendar for the first time since, oh, 1582.

Seriously. To line up with reality and historical expectations, we should change it so that Winter and the associated holidays start in January or February and Summer kicks off in April or May and ends in July to match up with season-appropriate, yearly recurring weather patterns. Noooo, there’s no such thing as global warming…

So apropos of the apparent untimely shift in seasons, we’re kicking off our End of Summer reviews a bit earlier than usual, filled with a rather un-Summerlike wave of black and death metal coldness (with a touch of gothic symphonic, power and traditional AOR and glam to round things out nicely).

Welcome to Spring! Well, almost, and if you don’t count the wildly whipping changeability between relative warm weather and bitter cold snaps at the drop of a hat…didn’t that damn groundhog predict an early end to Winter? Just can’t trust anyone these days…